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A: THUNDERDOME

One of my colleagues, who will remain nameless was singing Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA" to himself as he edited a paper.

As luck would have it, I would soon be linked to the music video. Pay close attention to the metallic, dome-like structure in whose shadow Miley's shakin' her hips (like yeah!):


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M11SvDtPBhA

Hmm. Los Angeles, lots of AutoTune--THAT'S IT. Return with me, teenyboppers, to '95 and Tupac's sublime video for "California Love," about a minute and a half in:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWOsbGP5Ox4

This is, of course, THUNDERDOME:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hQC3nkftrk

So, my gentle readers, let me put it to you: Two tunes enter, one song leaves. Who's it gonna be? Tupac or Miley?

Finally got to look at video of yesterday's stunning upset at the Confederations Cup:



[edit: looks like they pulled the video with the great commentary. I'm leaving my translation up, because it, more than anything else I've read lately, sums up how stunning and how awesome yesterday's performance was, especially to the rest of the sporting universe.]

[edit 2: I've found another highlight reel. The video feed is the same for both goals, so just imagine the commentary is in Mexican spanish and not in Croatian:]



This is from a Mexican broadcaster. Gems from the commentators, here. The first goal:

"It looks like Dempsey and Donovan have changed places--now Dempsey through the left side--Davis gives it back--They filter it forward for Altidore--The United States is playing well GOOOOOOOOOL! GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOl! THE UNEXPECTED, THE INCREDIBLE IS HAPPENING IN THIS MATCH! IT LOOKED LIKE SPAIN WAS DOING BETTER, BUT THE AMERICAN UNION [note: Spanish-language commentators love riffing on team names] SCORED JUST LIKE THAT! WE WERE JUST SAYING "THEY'RE PLAYING WELL. . . THE SCORE IS ONE-NIL!"

(during the replay)

"The North American team was going to be trouble for Spain, because they're cold, they know how to attack, not like South Africa, which looked absolutely innocent even in the moment of the attack"


The second goal:

". . . and, including since the arrival of Cazorla, Spain has not had a single good offensive play. They haven't gotten used to the change. And Sp--Spain with problems. LOOK OUT. ATTENTION--THIS COULD BE IT--DONOVAAAAAAAAAN'S GOT IT--[Donovan crosses to Dempsey] NO GOOD, HE STRUCK IT TOO SOFTLY--[Dempsey finishes] THE BALL IS IN THE GOAL! DEMPSEY! DEMPSEY SHOWED NO MERCY! DEMPSEY SHOWED NO MERCY! UNITED STATES! AND THIS LOOKS LIKE A HOLLYWOOD HORROR MOVIE--ONCE AGAIN, A DEFENSIVE ERROR, THE BALL STAYS THERE, AND DEMPSEY PUTS IT IN. THIS IS INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Watch Manny Pacquiao demolish Ricky Hatton. I had predicted a TKO in 9--I was totally stunned to watch Manny end it so emphatically in two rounds.

A longer essay on what Pacquiao means to the world later, I promise.

Nike Philippines strikes a patriotic note, setting some Pacquiao highlights to the national anthem:

Lupa ng araw ng luwalhati't pagsinta,
Buhay ay langit sa piling mo,
Aming ligaya na pag may mang-aapi,
Ang mamatay ng dahil sa 'yo.


in the English version, sung during the Commonwealth period:

Beautiful land of love, oh land of light,
In thine embrace 'tis rapture to lie;
But it is glory ever when thou art wronged
For us thy sons to suffer and die.

I just got Philip Glass's Solo Piano album. A bunch of reviewers on Amazon hurl brickbats at Glass's piano-playing--complaining that what would otherwise be excellent music is spoiled by his less than technically perfect playing.

After a few listens in the headphones, I agree-- Glass does seem to stumble in a few places. Where the patterns speed up, you can hear him start to go a bit uneven.

That said, I don't think it detracts unduly from the recording. The five pieces in the "Metamorphosis" cycle are hauntingly simple. Repetitive, yes, but not droning or overwhelming in the way that, say Einstein at the Beach can be. For "out-there" music, it's pretty accessible and (to me, anyway) eminently listenable.

Here's the most famous piece, "Metamorphosis Two"



I really need to go watch The Hours now, because I've heard snips of Glass's score.

This is probably the umpteenth time I'm going to post this, but I really dig this remix. In about a week, I'm probably going to end up doing a bit of parallel citation for the second verse---I think I've finally worked out allt he cases Jay-Z relies on in his conversation with the cop.

Some highlights from the Pacquiao v. de la Hoya bout, via the Philippine Inquirer. Pacman in the red trunks, Oscar in the burgundy.

Here's the 7th round, in the opinion of many the best round of the fight, courtesy SoloBoxeo.com



Amusingly, SoloBoxeo, a Spanish-language boxing site, used the Philippine feed.

Here's Round 8, the final round of the combat

Bethesda blogger Nutgraf reports on the results of a four-month long experiment into the photodegradation of six-pack rings

He even has a handy Youtube video on what mostly-photodegraded six-pack rings look like after four months in the suburban Maryland sun:




From the experiment:

The experiment ran from August 3 to December 6, so this is what four months in a Bethesda back yard will do do a six-pack ring. No, it’s not an overnight dissolve. But it’s not 500 years of trapping ducks and fish either. This ought to ease the furrowed brows of my colleagues, who paid a disconcerting amount of attention to this story.

A techno/ambient remix of scenes from Jean-Luc Godard's dystopian sci-fi classic, Alphaville, which has become one of my favorites, despite it's being very strange and very, very French.

"Will You Smile Again?" by . . . And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead.

If you don't want it then you could at least pretend
That the paper's your soul and your blood's in the pen

. . . And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead performing "Will You Smile Again?"---LIVE.

On the tort side, it's lucky for this idiot that he's in CT, which is a comparative-negligence state. In DC/MD/VA---NO RECOVERY.

Massive Attack, "Protection."

. . . you can't change the way she feels, but you can put your arms around her . . .

I know I'm a bit late, but I noticed something that should have been obvious.

President Bush's stuff has declined since 2001. No, I don't mean his political acumen or his popularity, although that certainly is the case. No, I mean his pitching form. Here he is throwing out the first pitch at the Nats' home opener:


The President at the Nats' home opener this season. I'm running this version because the Associated Press version squelched out the boos of the crowd.

Ouch. Nowhere near the strike zone--not even in the American League.

Now it has become a part of post-9/11 legend that when the President came to Yankee Stadium, he threw a strike. I seemed to remember that. Everybody repeated that. Many people--including the President himself-- took great pride in his pitching that evening. So I pulled the video:


The President, in happier times.

Sure enough, a solid strike, right down the middle.

Maybe President Bush rose to that occasion--many pitchers get better in "big game" situations, after all. So I decided to look at what might have been a more typical G.W. Bush outing, the Nats' home opener at RFK in 2005.

Note how many more cheers than boos. But he does OK-- a chest-high ball, but you know, they do call those high strikes these days.

I wonder if the Opening Day boos rattled the President.

It would appear that the forward march of globalization, aided and abetted by satellite television, has revealed that the world really is flat. Here, two Iraqis--a physicist and an exponent of "Koranic science"-- debate the proposition that the world is flat, and not round.

"Koranic Science" is probably a bit too esoteric for me, even if its advocate is forceful and earnest. But note particularly his comments at the end of the interview:

What I say is based on Koranic science. He [the physicist] bases his arguments on the kind of science that I reject categorically-- the modern science that they teach in schools. This science is a heretic innovation that has no confirmation in the Koran. No verse in the Koran indicates that the earth is round or that it rotates. Anything that has no indication in the Koran is false.

How quaint, we think. Somewhere, on the far side of the world, there are people so benighted as to believe that the world is flat. We can settle back in our comfortable, first-world enlightenment and look on them with a combination of pity, scorn, and amusement--can't we?

I'd hope so. But we can't. On this side of the civilizational divide, there are also fundamentalists, categorically rejecting all things that are not specifically addressed in holy writ. There are also those who, although not fundamentalists per se, can simply dismiss evidence that runs counter to the "correct" way of reading the situation.